Our Story ❤️
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Byron and Nisha met at a coding bootcamp in Los Angeles in February, 2019. They eventually both ended up working together as engineering fellows, where their friendship blossomed.
After their fellowship ended after a beautiful and adventurous Summer together, they both Nisha and Byron parted ways and did their own things, but something about their story always felt unfinished.
In 2021, Nisha reached out to Byron and invited him to vist her in her new hometown of Bozeman, Montana. Byron visited Montana on Christmas 2021, and stayed with Nisha through the New Year. When Byron went back to San Diego, they both realized that they wanted to be together. Nisha asked Byron to come back to Bozeman, and Byron flew back the next day. On Feb 12th 2022, Byron & Nisha officially started dating, 3 years after their story started ❤️
A Lost, Struggling College Student
Byron. La Jolla, California.
Despite most of his friends and classmates had already graduated, Byron was still continuing his education at UC San Diego--partly due to deciding to studying one of the hardest majors (Computer Science). In additional to feeling like a failure seeing all his friends move on from college, his other peers around him were accepting internships at companies like Google, Facebook and Netflix, while he had zero experience going for him. Eventually, Diana (his sister) helped Byron land his first web developer role at the San Diego Chinese History Museum, followed shortly by the San Diego History Center and the UCSD Guardian Newspaper. However, he still felt like he was behind his and needed a quick way to catch up. This led him to thinking of alternative pathways to tech--like a coding bootcamp.
2016 - 2017Javascript, The Hard Parts
Byron. Playa Vista, California.
By January 2017, Byron had fully commited to the idea of attending a coding bootcamp. However, he was still in school and was still going to be taking classes for a while at UCSD. However, he was determined to find the best coding bootcamp he can get into. He narrowed it down to three programs: 1. Hack Reactor in San Francisco 2. App Academy in New York 3. Codesmith in Los Angeles. With Los Angeles being driving distance, he decided to check out a community event called "Javascript, The Hard Parts". That day, Byron drove from Chula Vista all the way to the Codesmith campus in Playa Vista. This is where Byron first met Will Sentance--founder and creator of Codesmith, who was teaching the class that night. After experiencing what Codesmith was like, Byron knew this was the program for him. He was tempted to take a semester off to take the program and join Codesmith LA Cohort 5, but something told him to wait--and so he did.
Jan. 2017
A New Beginning
Nisha. Lesbos, Greece.
Nisha got her first remote job with the Sacred Plant. Having a remote job allowed her to work and travel to Lesbos, Greece with HackerParadise--a remote work travel program that organizes trips in different countries around the world. Through HackerParadise, she met several people who were working remotely in tech, which planted the idea that she too can have a similar career.
December 2017 - March 2018The Interview
Byron. Venice Beach, California.
Almost a year and a half after first going to Javascript the Hard Parts and meeting Will Sentance, Byron was close to being done with school (seriously, it took forever.) and was ready to join Codesmith. He applied and passed the interview with flying colors on his first try. Byron was officially accepted into Codesmith LA Cohort 26.
September 2018Frontend Masters
Nisha. Minneapolis, Minessota.
In one of her digital nomad Facebook groups, Nisha found a program being offered out of Minneapolis, Minesotta for people breaking into a tech career. She got accepted via a woman's scholarship that paid for her whole trip and lodging. The program solidifed her decision to try and break into tech. Towards the end of the program, she was told to find local programming meet ups in her area. This led her to Javascript, The Hard Parts in Los Angeles. From there she ended up enrolling in Codesmith's prep program (CS Prep), and was eventually admitted to Codesmith LA Cohort 27.
November 2018Cohort 26.
Byron. Venice Beach, California.
In December 2018, Byron packed a small luggage into his Black 2007 Honda Civic, and began his chapter of living in Los Angeles. This was the first time ever that Byron had lived outside of San Diego. In his mind, failure was not an option. He had no job, no work experience, his parents helped paid for Codesmith tuition, and he was renting out a small room on Airbnb while he was attending Codesmith. However, this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. This was the beginning of one of the most important chapters of Byron's life. On December 17th, 2018, Codesmith LA Cohort 26 started and where he met his cohort-mates--which ultimately became a second family of life long friends.
Dec. 2018Byron and Nisha Meet For the First Time.
B+N. Venice Beach, California.
Byron had just completed his junior portion of Codesmith and he and his cohort and just started their senior portion. Nisha and Cohort 27 had just started their junior portion and was their first day at Codesmith. Early that morning, both cohorts did their introductions to each other--and this was the first time Byron and Nisha met. Byron's first thought when Nisha introduced herself was "Wow. She's definitely the type of girl I would be interested in, but I'm definitely not going to even try."
February 4th, 2019Seat Stealer
B+N. Venice Beach, California.
Byron and Nisha both continued through their Codesmith life not interacting with each other too much. Codesmith seniors were extremely busy with their senior coding projects, while juniors were busy with lectures and coding excercies. However, there were a few particular memories that stood out during this time. One interesting fact about Nisha's cohort was that she was the only girl, and because of this, Byron's teammmates' Emilia and Melody, would often hang out with Nisha and invite her to hang out and work with them. On several occasions, Byron would come back to his seat to find Nisha sitting and working at his desk while hanging out with Emilia and Melody. Byron would pull up a chair and work on the side of the table--and this often secretly annoyed him. "Yup. I am definitely never going to try and date this girl.", he said to himself everytime he found her sitting in his seat.
Feb. - Mar. 2019Fellowship and a blooming friendship.
B+N. Venice Beach, California.
After Cohort 26 graduated, Byron, along with Emilia and Joel, stayed at Codesmith to work as Engineer Fellows. Simultaneously, Nisha and Cohort 27 became seniors. During this time, Byron and Nisha did not interact much, although lots of interesting stories happened during this time--but we'll save that for a different time. When Cohort 27 graduated, Nisha, along with Noah and Tang, joined Byron as Engineering Fellows. This is when Byron and Nisha's friendship slowly started to blossom. As fellows, they all shared an office together and spent most of their time together. Overtime, Byron and Nisha would start to play hookie from their Fellow duties and sneak out of Codesmith. One of the first things they bonded over was Yoga--they would often sneak out in the afternoon and take hot yoga classes at Sweat Yoga in Playa Vista. From there, they did lots of various things together from going out for lunch, going out to work out, hanging out with cohort-mates, Thursday night drinks, going to Cafe Gratitude, studying for coding interviews, going to Coffee Shops, going to Griffith Observatory, celebrating both of their birthdays (Fun fact: Byron and Nisha were born 3 days apart!) and lots of other fun adventures. It was one of the most fun and beautiful summers of their lives.
May 2019Summertime Sadness.
B+N. Alibi Room, Culver City, California.
As Summer was coming to the end, so was the end of both Byron and Nisha's time at Codesmith as their fellowship was ending. Two weeks prior to Fellowship graduation, Byron accepted his first software engineering job at Ticketmaster. Nisha shortly would also accept a job from Netflix thanks to her amazing friend Josie from Cohort 25. After such an amazing Summer, Byron finally realized he was starting to feel deep sadness knowing that he would no longer be seeing Nisha everyday--and it finally hit him that he had extremely strong feelings for her. However, he didn't know about her feelings--and had a feeling she didn't feel the same way back (She didn't, at the time). Graduation day finally comes, and there were a lot of emotions between all the fellows knowing this was their last day together. Graduation came and went and late night celebrations ensued as all Codesmith graduations do. In typical Will Sentance fashion, he yelled to all the celebrating graduates "Let's go to the Alibi Room!", and everyone made their way over. Both Byron and Nisha were feeling extremely emotional for their own reasons. As the partying started to die down, Byron, Nisha, Tang and Noah were sitting on the curb outside of The Alibi Room. With a mixture of intoxication and emotions, Nisha said something along the lines "You know, I might never see any of you again after tonight." And in that moment, Byron felt heartbroken. They said their final goodbyes and went their separate ways. They would not speak for months.
July 2019